Smaller crowds than Communist organisers predicted attended commemorations for the eighty first anniversary of Russia's 1917 Revolution on Saturday.

The Russian interior ministry said only eight thousand turned out in Moscow. while around two hundred and seventy thousand people took part in rallies across Russia.

The Communist Party is Russia's largest parliamentary grouping, but the BBC Moscow Correspondent says its leader Gannady Zyuganov is having growing difficulty over divisions between moderates and hardliners; opinion polls show less than a fifth of Russians support communist ideology.

In a televised address President Yeltsin, in the Black Sea resort of Sochi recovering from fatigue, said Russia's revolutionary period was over once and for all, and only fanatics still sought the violence of 1917.